Penalty on Ads Inviting Invalid Clicks

Alert for Google Adsense publishers! Anyone familiar with the world of online advertising knows what click baiting is. Loosely explained, click baiting is when you entice an online user into clicking on an ad despite the user’s disinclination to do so. There are plenty of ways in which online ad publishers trick users into clicking on ads they would not click if not for the deceit.Google Adsense has decided to take some stringent action against such click baiting.

There are several unscrupulous ways in which ad publishers take resort to click baiting. Some blend in their ad content with the background of the page in a way that users think that they are actually clicking on some useful link. In a second, they know that they have clicked on an ad. The other trick used is to place ads strategically around navigation buttons, like a dropdown menu. Many users are unable to do the pointing correctly and end up clicking on the ad.

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Other ways of click baiting include something called click ring. What happens here is a network of ad publishers get together to click on each other’s ads! As a result, all of them get more clicks on their ads, and more revenue.

Look at some of the points put out by Google that defines what an
‘invalid click’ is:

Use of clicking tools like clickbots, other forms of robots or software

Clicks registered by ad publishers by clicking on their own ads

Getting ads clicked by others repeatedly, in a non-organic manner

You will find ad data about Google ads on the developer page
dedicated for this purpose. Any ad publisher who doesn’t want to
fall foul of the new rules should do something about keeping a track
of traffic coming from ads. If they feel that something is wrong,
they should fix the problem before Google comes calling with a
penalty. But this will not affect most publishers of ads. The ones
affected will be informed through Adsense Control Panel Policy
center.